By Patrick Corcoran

One of the “truths” about the Mexican presidential election that emerged in the American media is that Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is the candidate of the poor masses, while Felipe Calderón carried the banner for the wealthy. Implicit in this outlook was the idea that Mexico is hopelessly divided between a number of different groups: rich versus poor, north versus south, white collars versus working stiffs. Right versus left, internationalist versus withdrawn, Calderón versus Lopez Obrador. Two candidates for two Mexicos.

This following passage, which reads like a bureaucrat’s imitation of a Bob Dylan song, is typical: “[AMLO’s] support comes from those who have nothing to lose, from families who live on less than $5 a day, from people who lack medical insurance, their own homes or a secure old-age pension, and from the countless folk who have been stepped on so many times that they have stopped believing in the police, in government institutions and in politicians' promises.”

The preceding (written by Jorge Ramos of Univision and appearing in The San Jose Mercury News) is hardly exceptional. The Nation’s John Ross (who has written favorably of AMLO) recently wrote, “The country is divided in half geographically … and by critical issues of class and race.” Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette (an AMLO critic) described the situation thusly: “It is Mexico versus Mexico — in this case, middle-class Mexico versus poor Mexico.”

But this column’s fourth word lingers in quotation marks because there never was a whole lot of evidence provided to back up this theory. Mexicans hardly walk in political lockstep with one another, but the divisions are not nearly as stark as one might believe from the previous quotations.

A brief look at polls conducted by the Mexico City daily Reforma in June, and discussed at length in Letras Libres, reveals voting preferences that defy easy classification.¹

The Reforma poll of 2,100 Mexicans broke the electorate into four income-based segments: rich, relatively rich, relatively poor, and poor. Someone only casually acquainted with Mexican politics would think that the poorest segment would be overwhelmingly pro-AMLO, while the richest segment would trend heavily for Calderón.

In fact, the numbers were much more complicated. The proportion of voters expressing intent to vote for AMLO was as follows, ascending from the poorest segment to the richest: 29 percent, 30 percent, 29 percent, and 25 percent. Calderón’s level of support among those same groups was 22 percent, 30 percent, 29 percent, and 47 percent.

The richest group constituted less than 10 percent of those polled, clearly representing Mexico’s economic elite. Yet their support for AMLO, the supposed populist nightmare to the wealthy, was only 5 percent less than that of Mexico’s economic underclass. Calderón, by contrast, polled only eight points lower than AMLO among Mexico’s poorest voters. Even among the wealthiest slice of society, the 22-point lead Calderón’s enjoyed over AMLO was significant, but his 47-percent support was hardly the runaway majority one might expect. Ironically, AMLO and Calderón enjoyed identical backing among the crucial middle class, 30 and 29 percent for the lower and upper middle class, respectively.

Such statistics don’t suggest that pitched battles of class war are imminent. But what of the other great divisions in Mexico, such as that which exists between the industrialized north and the impoverished south?

It is true that AMLO carried all of the southern states, while Calderón won the north, but neither man carried anything close to a majority in his respective region. The June poll has the Panista favored by 33 percent of the population in the north compared to 20 percent for AMLO, while in the south the score was 32 percent to 23 percent in the other direction. Even the significance of these relatively minor differences is diluted by the fact that Mexicans, showing a faith in reason that is lamentably absent from the United States’ system, do not have an electoral college.

Plugged-in, educated Mexico versus outdated, unschooled Mexico? Likewise, the picture here is complicated. Among voters who completed no more than a primary school education, ostensibly the foundation of AMLO’s support, only 24 percent pledged a vote for the Perredista, compared to 21 percent for Calderón. Among those who completed some post-high school education, Calderón enjoyed a 38 percent to 29 percent lead over his Tabascan adversary.

Even when comparing voting habits to self-identification within the political spectrum, there is a surprisingly weak correlation between leftists voting for AMLO and rightists for Calderón. A mere 54 percent of self-described leftists declared their intention to vote for AMLO, while just 36 percent – barely a third – of those placing themselves on the political right put themselves in Calderón’s camp.

The simplistic framework fused onto the Mexican electorate’s voting tendencies simply does not hold up. The relatively enthusiastic embrace of Calderón by the poor and the acceptance of AMLO by the wealthy may be counterintuitive, but individuals’ voting decisions often are. While the reasons for Mexican’s voting patterns remain murky, what is clear is that the stark divisions between Mexico’s voters often claimed or insinuated in recent media coverage simply do not exist.

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¹ The article was written by Miguel Basáñez, and appeared in the September edition of Letras Libres. The levels of support indicated for each candidate in the Reforma polls are lower than they appeared in the election in July because people who did not intend to vote were also polled. The total of those not planning to vote was 379 out of 2,100, or 18 percent.

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Patrick Corcoran, a MexiData.info guest columnist, is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He can be reached at corcoran25@hotmail.com.